


Days and Nights and Crimson Noons

by reserve



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: All Roads Lead to Canon, Anxiety, Francis Crozier’s Eat Pray Love, Implied Rimming, M/M, Melodrama, Mistaken Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23803612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve
Summary: Captain Francis Crozier spends a fortnight in Positano.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier & Sir James Clark Ross, Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 38
Kudos: 146
Collections: All Well: The Terror April 2020 Fest





	Days and Nights and Crimson Noons

**Author's Note:**

> My first real foray into this intimidating fandom and written for “All Well 2020.” 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who leant me their ear over the 24 hours I yelled about this fic. If you know me at all, then you know how shamelessly self-indulgent this is.

Another dull admiralty affair!

It was an especial affront, after the delightful little cafes of Paris, the bustling squares of Madrid, and most dearly, the lazy fortnight Francis Crozier had spent on the Amalfi coast, that he should be trapped here now. With Italy in his hindsight, winking an apologetic goodbye, this stuffy banquet was more of a chore than Francis could have previously thought possible. 

Were it not for James Clark Ross, he wouldn’t be here at all. 

“Your reintroduction to society and a bonny opportunity to find your next voyage,” James had written in his looping, beloved hand. “I’ve already accepted on your behalf, so you cannot beg off as I’m sure you are already dreaming of doing. Send your trunks here.” 

Thus Francis had come, shortly returned from his trip to the Continent, and forever unable to deny anything James asked of him. And now he was stood, with whiskey in hand, beside a large potted ficus, trussed up in epaulet and lace, and forced to watch the preening _corps d’elite_ of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy impress each other. 

Abandoned and unwanted, he wondered where James had gotten to, and on the heels of that sullen thought, if Ann was with child yet. This question led to a vague archipelago of considerations surrounding sex more generally until, as though ferried away by the force of his own longing, he simply let his mind wander. Back to Italy, back to the Amalfi coast, to Positano and the bed he’d let there for one good week and one _blissful_ one. 

The trip hadn’t fixed him of his melancholia, nothing could cure that, but—

 _Christ,_ Francis had loved Positano: its minarets and parapets. A city built into the side of a verdant mountain like colorful barnacles upon a bow. Beloved by the Greeks and named for Poseidon himself, a city born of the sea. 

Francis had seen Naples, Salerno, Capri — but he had come back to Positano. The streets and stone steps smelled of ripe citrus, lemon and orange trees dotted the landscape. He woke each morning to amble from his lodgings to sun drenched Mediterranean beaches, then rickety-chaired, wine-drenched alley hideaways, then back to his lodgings to do it all again the following day. There was no other place like it, he was smitten immediately. 

He could almost forget the grey days he’d spent with the Rosses before his departure, and the time in uncertain company with Sophy. He could even appreciate the Antarctic in fresh contrast to the bright, livid intensity of the Italian seaside. 

And he learned to see the appeal of the Med; it wasn’t the water which called to him but he could hear it whisper. 

Francis had picked up a tan, broad-brimmed hat when he reached the Riviera and refused to feel ashamed about it. He knew his own complexion, and he would burn without some coverage. Besides, there was something freeing about wearing a hat so far afield of his usual woolen command cap. Italy was going through a faddish obsession with the American West and he encountered striped ascots and trousers on fashionable vacationers come to sip limoncello or visit the parish church where the relics of St. George supposedly rested. Francis had no inclination toward the church, but the limoncello suited him; as did the lapping teal and lapis waters of Tigullio Bay. 

The true appeal of his stay in that ancient maritime city came at the end of the first week. Even in a place that enchanted him, he’d been stupid, lonely and half-drunk for maybe days. He missed attention. He wanted the knowing regard of someone willing to pretend Francis could have them. Wasn’t that the exact reason for his travels? To lose himself in the world in an effort to find himself again? Hadn’t he taken an extended leave for the express purpose of spirits without consequence, and if there happened to be pleasures of the flesh, then come what may?

And come they did. 

Luck held out her soft palm in Positano and offered him a supple gift. The oppressive formality of the admiralty party couldn’t keep his day-dreams in check; what had passed for him there had been _changing_. Had he ever truly thrown caution to the wind, he wondered. He was as careful and calculating in his adventures as he was in his personal choices, the whiskey notwithstanding. 

But not in Positano. 

He met an Englishman there: young and tanned as a local, chestnut hair curled up by the heat, frantic strands falling past his open collar. He was cheerful in each way that Francis was hopelessly dour. 

“Give me your name,” Francis had said on the first day they spoke, while the man showed Francis his beautiful renderings of the landscape in charcoal and ink. 

The man had turned coy, and then bold when Francis pressed for it. “Choose one for me,” he’d said, which Francis thought meant opening his purse for an evening in his new friend’s company. 

He had been wrong, and he had chosen James, for James Clark Ross was the only other man he knew who was quite so handsome and with whom he was quite so taken at first blush. 

“Call me Frank,” Francis had told him, feeling daring. Feeling remade. 

“You’re a naval man, Frank,” his Riviera James had said, once they were back in Francis’ rented apartment. He had the sort of plummy accent that Francis had come to loathe more with each passing moment spent in English society, but it stood so in contrast to the man’s easy nature, his loose linen pants and aimless charm, that Francis found he loved it in spite of himself. That maddening drawl felt like a balm to him. 

“I am indeed,” said Francis. He picked up his command cap from where it sat on the side table and put it on James’ head. It looked ridiculous and alluring over his lovely curls. “ _Captain_ James,” he said, smiling at his little jest. 

James’ brow furrowed. He took off the cap with the slightest of frowns and shook out his curls: vain, endearing. He had the manners of an aristocrat run away to be an artist. Then the amused tilt of his mouth that Francis had come to covet in mere hours of acquaintance returned. Francis wanted his mouth on that mouth, he wanted his hands in that hair. He wanted to press his face into thick curls while he had James from behind. He—he barely knew whose thoughts flew through his head. He was bewitched. 

“It must be very exciting to be an officer in the navy,” James said, practiced and casual. It was the kind of thing a lady might say when she pretended to know something of the sea. 

“You might say,” Francis replied, humoring him and weak with desire. “I am lately of an Antarctic expedition, too.” 

“Oh-ho,” said James, delighted. “Will you tell me of it? Were there penguins? Did you dance a quadrille upon an ice-berg?” 

Francis was no great storyteller, but James’ expression was so rapt, his tone so keen, that Francis gave in like ice chopped through by iron.

Before he reached the bit about the quadrille, about his own James Ross, begowned and petticoated in his arms, Francis had closed the scant space between this James, his bandage for a wound too fresh to name, and gently kissed his mouth. It was not the thing, with him, not truly. But James opened for him readily, his tongue eager and his hands pushing off Francis’ braces, rushing for his fly. They went from two chairs, to one, and to the bed. 

James’ hair smelled of lavender oil and sea salt, and when Francis asked after it, James colored and said it helped the curl. He kept his shirt on every time they came together; he must have had scars but Francis found no fault with the skin he could see. And taste. 

In the stifling present, cut crystal glass nearly empty and woefully so, Francis wondered how he could ever smell lavender again without an immediate cockstand in its wake. He wondered if he might be in love. 

He was probably the only man in this room less boring than he looked. The only man who had adventured with as much variety as he had: encouraged by moans and sighs to tongue open the dusky furl of a man’s anus until that man begged for more, for his fingers, and then his cock. Yes, that was it. Francis knew what seamen of every ilk—commissioned and commercial alike—got up to, but that was furtive, in shadow and berth. It was _incomparable_ to the pleasures he’d wallowed in under Italian skies. He’d fucked himself raw, and with nary a thought of the lashing that would come with it should present company have been included. 

For four days it was like that: a soul to walk beside him to the beach and to the market, to drowsy retreats where there was no dearth of wine and Francis found the courage to lean in close enough to touch. He had already perfected the art of drawing room romantic subterfuge and here it felt more charged, returned, combustible as a Chinese rocket. 

“How many times can you have me,” James had asked him one eve, teasing. “Once in a night? Twice?” He was sprawled out, flushed, and his legs were carelessly akimbo. James must have been about Sophy’s age, but his merriment hadn’t been dimmed by practicality. It was easier to be a man. James shoved at him with his toe, right in the shoulder. He raised his brows. 

“I’ll have you finish so many times you black out,” Francis had growled. “You’ll forget your own name.” 

“Who even knows what that is,” James laughed, and Francis thought nothing of it, he only lapped up the peels of laughter like a man starved for song. 

When they parted ways, he gave the Rosses’ address and pleaded for a letter. None had come, but he had hope.

Francis felt his stomach rumble. He was, he realized, actually starving. And his glass was empty. These were problems he could remedy. There would be time for fantasy later. He had worked himself into a state of half-arousal as it were and that wouldn’t do. With a mournful glance at his chaperone, the ficus plant, Francis attempted to will away his erection in preparation for an expedition to the buffet. 

He almost succeeded, but then there was James. Saying his name, coming toward him, reappeared at the worst possible moment and with him—another man, crushingly handsome, taller than them both, and in full dress just as they were. He cradled a delicate glass of brandy in one kid-gloved hand. 

Francis felt the room lurch nauseatingly to the starboard side. Icy water crashed over him. His field of vision narrowed to two points of black, two solar eclipses. 

“Francis,” James was saying, through gale-force winds. Through crashing hail against splintering wood. Through the chatter of a room full of people who wished him gone. “Francis, Fra _ncis_ , _Francis_ ….”

James clapped a hand on his forearm. Francis nearly threw up into the chintz planter. 

“You must meet Commander James Fitzjames, lately of the _Clio_ and just come from his own jaunt through Europe.” James gestured at the man beside him. “James, this is my dear friend, Francis Crozier. You’ll be _thrilled_ to have him with you when you make the Passage.” 

“Your reputation precedes you, Captain,” said a voice Francis would never forget, with a smile that seemed forced. “Sir James was just telling us about your voyage south.” 

Someone laughed heartily in the distance and it echoed. Francis suspected Death himself had come to claim him. 

“I’m—you must,” he stammered. “Please excuse me.” 

And then he fled. 

Fitzjames found him in the cloak room—the attendant having just been sent away to fetch a coat that didn’t exist—where Francis was absolutely not hyperventilating with his hands upon his knees. 

“I’m sorry. Please believe me.” Fitzjames’ voice was soft. 

“A quadrille on an ice-berg?” said Francis. He righted himself. His vision swam. 

“I knew _one_ thing about that voyage. A single thing. I didn’t know— I had no idea that you—“

“Good Christ, but you knew _better,_ didn’t you?” Francis heard himself laugh, his accent grown thicker. He tasted bile. “Was it a ruse? Some cruel trick to amuse your chummy throng of brother-officers? _Entrapment_?”

“You cannot entrap an equal participant,” James hissed. He seized Francis by both arms and visibly thought better of it before hanging on. “Whose arse did you bugger through the mattress three nights running?” 

“Four!” 

“Then we are at an impasse, Francis.” 

And how it grated. That voice, his Christian name, and now. 

“It was attractive,” Fitzjames went on. _Actually_ James. Still tanned, but his hair was tamed. “When you were wine soaked in the sunshine and I with you, and I could feel how big—how much you—“

“ _Stop_.” 

Francis realized that Fitzjames was breathing harshly. Affected. He wore the same mask they all wore. How dare Francis see him without it.

“We’ll see how appealing that habit is with less warmth in the air,” Fitzjames recovered himself. 

“Which _habit_ ,” Francis spat. “You clearly have some of your own. And who said anything about the bloody Passage!” 

Fitzjames let go of him. He tossed back his ridiculous fringe and seemed to deflate slightly. Francis wanted to haul him to the ground. He wanted to string himself up and spend the afterlife ensuring that James Fitzjames never had a moment’s peace. He wanted to hit him across his horrible, comely face and kiss away whatever blood thence came. 

The room smelled of lavender.

“Barrow is making a go at it again and they’ll ask for you.” Fitzjames picked a piece of invisible lint from his sleeve. His mouth pinched in a painful, familiar way. “I hope you’ll say yes.” 

“Are you certain?” Francis asked, feeling the world right itself at the prospect of returning to active command even as he could feel himself spiraling out of control. No, there could be none of that. He _would_ make a go at the Passage if they offered it to him. And he would ask Sophy one more time to consider his offer. And he would forget this. He would. 

“They’ll give you _Terror_ ,” said Fitzjames. 

“And you?”

“ _Erebus_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Do not fear, cats and kittens: they absolutely get together in the arctic and then go back to that same rented apartment when they survive. 
> 
> As an aside, the historical Jimmy Fitzjimmy once convinced a collection of people he was Turkish and spoke no English. The man was down for a good jape, and I imagine, some escapism. He genuinely doesn’t know who Francis is here at first; he’s pretending to be someone else because he’s Like That.
> 
> If you enjoyed this, I hope you might [reblog](https://reserve.tumblr.com/post/616192573370925056/days-and-night-and-crimson-noons-reserve-the).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Days and Nights and Crimson Noons](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863501) by [BabelGhoti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabelGhoti/pseuds/BabelGhoti)




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